New Left Review 31, January-February 2005
A manifesto for the accurate conjugation of the aesthetic and political, from the author of The World Republic of Letters. What is the nature of the global literary space in which writers must produce their work? The limits of analogies based on Braudel or Wallerstein, and fields as employed by Bourdieu. Hierarchy, inequality and strategies of reversal in ‘the long and merciless war of literature’.
PASCALE CASANOVA
LITERATURE AS A WORLD
Customer: God made the world in six days and you, you can’t make me a damn pair of trousers in six months!
Tailor: But sir, look at the world and look at your trousers.
quoted by Samuel Beckett
Far, far from you world history unfolds, the world history of your soul.
Franz Kafka
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